In rail vehicle traffic, use is being increasingly made of diagnostic and monitoring systems with which changes in the state of components and assemblies of the rail vehicle are sensed to detect defects in these components and assemblies. In particular, in the case of a wheel set of a rail vehicle, the detection of damage is of particular interest with respect to hot running.
Modern high speed trains travel across borders and, therefore, have to comply with corresponding criteria for ensuring interoperability, for example guideline 96/48/EG. The guideline requires, inter alia, onboard monitoring of the wheel set bearings of the wheel sets of the rail vehicle. To disclose critical operating states such as, for example, hot running of a wheel set bearing, it is necessary, in particular, to monitor the temperature of the wheel set bearings.
EP 1 365 163 A1 discloses a device for monitoring the temperature of a wheel set bearing of a wheel set of a rail vehicle in which a sensor element is arranged directly on a sealing element of the wheel set bearing, i.e. as close as possible to the load zone of the wheel set bearing. However, mounting a temperature sensor directly on the load zone of a wheel set bearing on which the highest temperatures have been empirically found to occur, i.e. in the circumferential direction of the outer bearing ring viewed above, gives rise to a certain amount of expenditure in terms of mechanical connection of the temperature sensor and the cabling thereof and is often structurally difficult to implement for reasons of space, in particular if a plurality of load zones have to be taken into account within a bearing unit, for example in the case of double bearings.